Salman Rushdie opens his NY Times tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the statement Gabo lives.

Alongside the kerfuffle between Netanyahu and the newly united PLO-Hamas Palestinian leadership, Mahmoud Abbas this week made a statement in sympathy with survivors of the Nazi holocaust, in context of “ethnic discrimination and racism which the Palestinians strongly reject and act against.”

When China is the source of much of the illegal ivory trade, it’s unexpected to find the most promising safe haven for wild elephants in China.

Speaking of apparent contradictions, the State Department is launching another “Free the Press” campaign even while pressing to jail Pulitzer Prize winning NY Times reporter James Risen for his refusal to give up his sources.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation explains why we should be alarmed by the FCC’s latest attack on net neutrality, calling its “pay to play” model “profoundly dangerous for competition.”

“This is the future if nothing is done to stop it,” says Conor Friedersdorf in his Atlantic article, Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City.

Thomas Michelli reviews Matt Freedman’s latest artist’s book, Relatively Indolent but Relentless in hyperallergic weekend.

Think gender-bending is just for humans? Check out this Brazilian insect species whose genitalia don’t match their sex.

We look forward to hearing Cornelius Eady, Li-Young Lee, Kim Addonizio, Susana Case and more at the upcoming Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Trees budding, already in bloom, and bulbs sprung. We saw the sunset over Provincetown Bay one night last week. April rains have coaxed up the tulips by our front door and the birds keep talking:  Spring, Yes.